Robert C. Day's Blog, page 48

Sky

I like the skies. Here are some skies that I liked so much that I captured them in a box (okay – a smartphone) and made them perform for your amusement.
Don’t worry though, all the skies here have been cared for, loved, well fed, tucked in at night and read quality bedtime stories.

Oh, and they are all English skies.

This post was requested by Caprice at http://www.capricing.wordpress.com who is constantly more entertaining than me.

Oh, and they are all of sunsets and sunrises. I’m a big...

Toothbrush

What’s a toothbrush for? For brushing your teeth – right? The clue is in the name! Brush your teeth properly and you will have clean andbright teeth– agreed? (keep nodding your head – you’re doing fine)

Similarly, when you are thinking aboutwriting, if you follow these simple, but effective directions, then you will be muchmore likely to have a worldwide bestseller:

Hauntthe library. Turn up the doorstep of your local library and refuse to leave until you have located every single book on Cr...

Human Adoption

You know, creative writing doesn’t have to be just about creating new characters to write about, you could also adopt a different personality whilst writing. Imagine the difference that this could make to your creativity.

Here are some advantages of writing as someone else:

Releasing thefear. Some people get stuck with their writing because they are afraid of what their family and friends will think of them. Adopting a personality that does not have friends or family could help with that. Un...

Not Funny

This is a sketch that I just did. It’s not meant to be funny. It’s a demonstration of eptitude, or lack thereof. Kind of.

Materials: Bic fine black pen. Stabilo Boss blue pink green highlighters. Pinch of soil from the plantpot (don’t worry, the peace-lilly is doing fine). Paper white.

Okay – it’s meant to be funny. Well, not really. I just wanted to see if I could draw a face and make it look like a face. Kind of.

Snot

I was going to sub-title this article ‘101 reason why you shouldn’t blow your nose’ but I could only think of three:

It grosses people out – particularly when there are lumps in it Good quality tissue paperis getting really expensive It’s a real shame to turn that beautiful,clean, white tissue into a soggy yellowish mess, especially when there’s more snot than you bargained for and it goes straight through and gets all-over your hand.Aw c’mon, don’t screw up your face like that–are you telli...

Code of Hammurabi

If you’re at all morbid then you probably already know that this year marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, but did you alsoknow that 2016 is the 3,770th anniversary (approximately)of the Codes of Hammurabi? No? Me neither until I looked it up on Wikipedia.

‘What’s that all about then?’I hear you cry! Well, it’s one of the first forms of law, this being aset of 282 rather bloodyedicts from the ancient Near East. Most of the penalties involve death, mutilation or money – accordin...

Fashion

“We are the goon squad and we’re coming to town beep-beep.” (David Bowie)

So near as I can tell it’s a chicken’n’egg thing. The fashion industriescreate new clothes and the people wear the new clothes that the … brrrrp. Stop – rewind.

I thought I knew something about fashion but I’ve just done a little reading and it turns out that I know nothing! All my carefully nurtured pre-conceptions about fashion houses being evil overlords, forcing us to wear clothes for a season and then declaring us...

Polygamy

James Patterson has published 10 new books so far in 2016 and he’sbeenhumming along at this pace for quite a while now. Ever wonderhow he manages to do that? Here’s the answer – he co-authors. He justifies this by maintaining that ‘collaborating with others brings new and interesting ideas to his stories’. Of his process, he say that he is ‘simply more proficient at dreaming up plots than crafting sentence after sentence’.

As of 2014,Patterson’sbooks have sold more than 300 million copies, wh...

Gravity

It not so much a wonder that things fall down, but that there is so much high stuff left after all these years of gravity.

Nuts